Hi John HRE is not simply a front-end to an online database, but is a fully-featured open source desktop research application which incorporates its own database. The primary use is genealogy, and to that end it's designed to take over and extend the features of the most capable but unfortunately no-longer-supported commercial program The Master Genealogist (TMG). However, the principles behind the study of genealogy are equally applicable to a wide range of historical fields. Historians are very poorly served by the commercial software market, and frequently find themselves locked into expensive or inflexible academic or cultural sector packages. We have identified the following high-level principles applicable to generic historical research software: * The data that needs to be stored for history research has a largely common structure usually falling into one of two broad types: 1. a description of something, or 2. how that thing relates to other things (for example via a person, date, time or location) * A researcher may want to view and analyse the same data from a variety of different perspectives * Rules can help to validate the veracity of an assertion of a relationship * High quality research requires an analysis of the evidential base for any assertions that are made, and the ability to be able to report on that analysis. Traditionally, historians have divided their research into targeted areas such as genealogy, anthropology, ecology, archaeology, military history and so on. The fundamental data and analysis requirements are the same, and can be dealt with in software in a common way even if the things being measured and the rules for validation may differ. By embracing these ideas the History Research Environment project aims to create a research platform of wide historical and cultural utility. We would like to encourage Wikimedians to get involved, especially in coding, with a view to interoperability and/or integration with the Wikimedia sites. More details can be found by following the links from here: https://historyresearchenvironment.org/articles/ Michael (User:MichaelMaggs on Commons) GitHub: https://github.com/History-Research-Environment/HRE--History-Research-Envir…